Bryan Veloso

Building on the community I cultivated as a Twitch broadcaster, I formally established Avalonstar as an entity on the eve of its 20th anniversary. This represented the natural progression of fostering authentic connections through shared gaming experiences. I created spaces where community members felt comfortable enough to share personal milestones and seek mentorship, becoming a supportive figure many affectionately called "dad." This period brought together two decades of personal growth that began with blogging in 2000, evolved through my design career, and matured through streaming—creating a cohesive identity that transcended any single platform.

My time at VShojo gave me an opportunity I never imagined I'd have — designing experiences that connected virtual talent with their fans in meaningful ways. After two decades of keeping my passion for Japanese idol culture separate from my design career, I finally got to merge these worlds. The highlight was conceptualizing a convention booth for Anime Expo 2023 that transformed how fans interacted with VTuber talent. I pushed for an immersive three-screen setup that brought fans into the streaming world they knew so well, rather than just having them stand in front of a single OLED television. When the talent shared how much they loved the experience, it validated everything we'd worked toward. My time at VShojo represented that perfect intersection of my professional skills and personal passions — the kind of alignment you spend a career hoping to find.

Altair was born from a moment of clarity during the pandemic. After watching streaming platforms consistently prioritize metrics over creator wellbeing, I found myself fed up with the status quo. I joked about starting a streaming service from scratch, and a week later, that joke had evolved into a serious venture. I took a stance that felt almost rebellious in the tech world: refusing venture capital to maintain our values, paying everyone a living wage, and placing creator mental health at the center of every decision. We assembled a team of nine incredible people spanning UX research to backend engineering, all united by the belief that content creation could be better. The journey wasn't without its challenges. We faced the sobering reality that video delivery at scale is exceptionally expensive without the resources of tech giants behind you. But through every setback, our values and vision remained firm to a fault. Though we ultimately ran out of money in March 2022, we stayed true to our values until the end. We showed that people are tired of being feed for algorithms and driven into the ground by metrics. The question "is it possible?" was answered with "not as we envisioned," but the desire for something better remains.

What began as an experiment to understand the platform I was designing for evolved into a full-time career as a content creator. The transition from "designing products" to "being the product" came with its share of anxiety, teaching me firsthand how metrics can poison the creative process. Over time, I found myself adopting the role of mentor to my community. I took advantage of teachable moments, putting down the controller to discuss platform changes or industry issues. These moments of connection became as valuable as the gameplay itself. Broadcasting gave me insights no design research ever could, showing me how communities form and how platforms could better serve the humans behind the screens—perspective that would later fuel everything from Altair's founding to my advocacy work within the industry.

At Twitch, I led the design of products for the company's social experience—including the company's initial versions of the Whispers and Friends products. Initiated and assisted in the design of highly-requested end-user features: the popular Emoticon Selector and Theater Mode. What made my approach unique was becoming a broadcaster myself. I realized that to truly understand what I was designing, I needed to experience it firsthand. This wasn't just user research, it was total immersion. Those early streams revealed insights about the platform that influenced my design decisions in ways traditional research never could. This period marked a significant shift in my career, planting seeds about how platforms could better support creator mental health and community building, concepts that would become central to my future endeavors.

Wrote daily about current events, web technologies, design philosophies and personal happenings. Created a sense of online community in a medium focused on the individual.

As GitHub's second designer, I led the redesign of the Gist platform—balancing technical functionality with usability for a growing developer audience. I spearheaded the creation of the "Octicons" icon library, establishing a visual language that became fundamental to GitHub's identity. My work extended to GitHub's first conference, CodeConf, developing branding that helped establish the company's presence beyond the digital realm. Working remotely (as I had since 2006) taught me valuable lessons about asynchronous collaboration—maintaining strong connections with engineers despite physical distance. These skills proved invaluable throughout my career as remote work became increasingly common in the industry.

Sets most of the initial design and branding direction for the collective's products and client projects. In English, "Makes things pretty."

In my final trimester, I spearheaded the development of a book for a Womens' Leadership Study course. I coordinated with 29 other students and later published the work for academic viewing.